Cloud computing environments distribute processing tasks over a pool of virtualized resources that are potentially geographically distributed within and between data centers and computing resource sites. While such geographic distribution is advantageous from a service resiliency standpoint, it can and does sometimes result in the generation of large volumes of wide area network (WAN) traffic, which transits the cloud infrastructure between the geographically separated physical computing resources that make up the cloud.
One type of processing task that can be geographically distributed is network visibility or monitoring. For example, network taps, which copy packets transmitted over a network, can be virtualized and located in different cloud computing sites. Similarly, network packet brokers, which receive packet copies from network taps and broker the packets to different network monitoring applications or tools can also be virtualized and located in cloud computing sites separate from the cloud computing sites where the virtual taps and the network monitoring applications or tools are located.
One problem that occurs when virtual network taps, virtual network packet brokers, and network monitoring applications are located in different cloud computing sites is that geographically distributed placement of such resources may not be optimal from a bandwidth utilization or performance perspective. For example, if a virtual network packet broker located in one cloud computing site sends a large amount of packets to an application in another cloud computing site, the traffic may consume a correspondingly large amount of WAN bandwidth between the two cloud computing sites. Consuming WAN bandwidth can cause latency in delivering the traffic to the network monitoring tools and applications and can also result in excessive charges for cloud resource utilization. In addition, the performance of the visibility network can be adversely affected by sub-optimal placement of virtual network visibility components.
Accordingly, there exists a need for optimizing placement of virtual network visibility components.